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Build Your Own PBX
Kerbo writes "Kerry Garrison has written up a complete guide to building your own PBX with Asterisk@Home to create your own working PBX system. In the article, he shows how you can build a complete, working system for under $20 (assuming you have some old hardware laying around the house)."
Become a Millionaire with only $20, and another $999,980 laying around.
For those with extra hardware to run Astrerix@Home, consider running Folding@Home! ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
So now when people call me they can go through auto attendent hell just like the big companies.
Ours (done in a modern machine, so it would have PCI 2.2 for the cards to drive Plain Old Phones) has a (not hard to do once the basics are working) callpath that's a caller-ID whitelist.
Calls from numbers "on the list" ring the phones, then go to voicemail, like "normal" calls would. Calls from one of our cellphones tell the caller how many new voicemails are waiting, then distinctive-ring the phones, then go to voicemail. Calls from unknown, private, or not-on-the-list numbers go straight to voicemail without ringing the phones.
You'll pry it out of my wife's cold dead hands...
For those that don't know...Private Branch Exchange[wikipedia.org]
It you just opened your own cottage industry style consulting business out of your home, something like this could make you look like a bigger business. I could see the advantage to that. The features of the system would be handy too for a new and very small business.
http://www.busyweather.com/
With all this talk of voip here and there, I've never understood how the actual conversion from ip to pots actually takes place.
Basically I want to know how these companies do it. How do the perform this termination service? How small a scale could one do this himself?
The most recommended card is the Digium Wildcard X100P FXO card which can be purchased brand new on eBay for $6.95 each.
Not for long...
So, this is a PBX. So, I can hook this hardware up to the telco and take incoming calls from clients anywhere in the world over IP and make a call for them to a telco phone number, and let them talk over my PBX, correct?
OK, but what I do not know is what kind of connection to the telco do I need to do this? Can I do it using my standard phone connection? I would think you need multiple lines outgoing to the telco POTS (plain old telephone system), correct? So, if I have N lines to the telco, I can handle a max of N calls from clients on my IP to Telco PBX, correct?
So, would this be cost effective as a business model? Is a certain number of lines required, etc?
TIA
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Hi,
I'm considering setting up Asterisk at home, however, the WAF (wife acceptance factor) is going to be very important here, so I'd like to make sure I know what I'm doing before I start. How hard is it to deploy an Asterisk@home with the following configuration:
Two outgoing lines (one for local calls via local telecom, one for US calls via VoIP (packet8 -- using their DTA-310), and three local extensions (only one will be a "real" telephone.
As I understand it, this means I need two FXOs, and one FXS. Can I use three separate cards for this, instead of buying a 2 or 4 port FXO, which seem to be more than 2* the cost of a single?
-- Is "Sig" copyrighted by www.sig.com?
It's too bad that there isn't some sort of online database of acronyms.
Perhaps we could call it Acronym Search.
Or perhaps some sort of search engine.
Help I'm a rock.
I could probably swing running the software and equipment, but I am lost with the administrative and telephony portion of having my own PBX.
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Here's a REAL PBX that is my personal property.
It's a Rolm CBX II 9000 that is configured to handle 10,000 lines. (Yes, it's operational) It was purchased for $3,000,000 when it was brand new. It's had additional upgrades installed, it's net value was over $5,000,000 at one point in the very recent past.
It fills an entire building. So, compare that with this new tech and you'll all the more appreciate what you have in front of you...
-
With Asterisk@Home, you simply need to download the disk image, burn it to a CD, and boot off of it.
- * Burn Asterisk@Home iso to a blank CD
Just a "minor technical detail", that last note. The way people don't RT*A around here, I'll bet in a day or two we'll see some late posts whining about their loss of data. (is that Darwin I hear?)* Boot your Asterisk PC with the CD and press enter
NOTE: This will erase all data on the hard drive of the PC!!!
Aw, com'on, don't tell me you've never just hit enter without REALLY reading the dialog box, right?
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Make sure your connection is up for it:
http://testyourvoip.com/
Wikipedia VoIP Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voip
Fucking THANK YOU!!
Once my SO figured out she could have this too if, and only if, daddy gets to buy a new machine. i said it'd probably needs a good amount of horsepower and needed a lot of ram - she was still stunned by the idea of having such a phone system, she didn't even question it.
Hot damn, new server AND a new phone system to play with - i looked at the gui screenshots of the astGUI client - holy shit, this is going to be fun.
Heh.. yeah. I knew what PBX was way back in the 80s before I was even in Middle School... Thank you Anarchist Cookbook!
Hey Folks,
We've got to be more careful - he's starting to ask questions. It's pretty important that he doesn't find out what else we've been keeping from him.
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
I've already got a highly effective PBX firewall in place. It's called "leaving the phone off the hook", and it's very effective around dinner time to ensure we don't get snowed by phone calls to our teenage daughters.
Even better, it comes with a highly effective content filter. Callers with truly important news will, upon finding the house phone is engaged, call one of our mobile phones. However, teenagers, with their inherent lack of cash and memories of past confrontations with parents over mobile phone call costs, will instead retry the home phone approximately every 60 seconds. I can guarantee that, from the instant I replace the phone after dinner, it's never more than 60 seconds till it starts ringing again.
You can just use a regular phone line or a voip line if you prefer. No need to talk to the phone company. Busy signals for incoming calls are the phone companies problem, you don't have to worry about that. In a simple case you might have your Asterisk box pick up on the second ring (caller ID comes in between ring 1 & 2) and ask the caller to "press 1 for Jack, 2 for Jill etc. When the caller makes a selection you then ring the phone distinctivly (ie. different kind of ring for different people) and if noone answers the call goes to voice mail.
You use this word, "geeks" in your post as if I'm supposed to know what it is. Are you all self-important that defining your words is beneath you? If you're worth your salt, you would have sold me on it so that I would consider your post worthy.
However, for your benefit, I hope slashdot institutes an auto-acronym feature. So that next time there's a story about a new BIOS (Basic Input/Output System), SCO (Santa Cruz Operation), IBM (International Business Machines), or even 3M (Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Corporation) you'll (you will) know what those acronyms mean.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
It's pretty much general knowledge what a PBX is.
Some trivia: PBXs used to be known as PABXs, when it was new and highly advanced for a company to have a private AUTOMATIC branch exchange, rather than one where a switchboard operator would plug plugs into the right holes to manually route calls. The original PABXs were electromechanical - some large companies had Strowger private exchanges the size of a typical telco exchange unit.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
DO NOT BOOT THE Asterisk@Home ISO !!!!!!
IT WILLE AUTOMATICALLY FROMAT YOUR / PARTITION WITHOUT AKSING YOU A THING.
OMG this is freekin' Unbelievable!!!
I've downloaded the Asterisk@Home and like every other n00b around I just booted up from it (no I've not read any warning s or FULL documentation). I bet 98% of people around to the same thing. After the kernel boot and X detection phase it started formatting my / partition. NOT even a ONE question asked. Of course it screwed my system.
The good part is that I booted from this ISO in a virtual machine (not my real box) and I just lost a default Debian installation (installed on a virtual machine).
Is this the latest way to distribute bad things on the net? Post an article regarding an open source project that do a lot of good things after it FORMAT your / partition?
Please if you wanna try Asterisk@Home ISO do it in a blank new virtual machine not your development/home primary box.
Regards,
the3ngineer
Especially if you are stripping the wire with your teeth at the time!
FreeMusicPush If you want to see more Free Music made, listen to Free